DHSI East Keynote Lecture - Mecha is not Orga: The Fiction of AI and the AI Industry
https://www.stfx.ca/events/dhsi-east-keynote-lecture-mecha-not-orga-fiction-ai-ai-industry
Abstract This talk considers the fictional roots of recent claims of AI as an existential risk that have been making headline news. Dating back to Alan Turing, literal readings of fiction, including the threat of superintelligent machines taking control of the world, have long shaped the AI industry. With no basis in science, I argue that this irrational anxiety serves not only as a distraction but as an unconscious defense as it substitutes a new object, autonomous machines, in place of one that cannot be acknowledged, the environmental and societal damage caused by a resource-intensive industry heavily invested in a mechanistic worldview that treats nature, including humans, as a lucrative commodity. The second part of the talk, traces two of Stanley Kubrick’s film projects and their shifting understanding of this technology. If 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) takes seriously intelligent enigmatic evolving machines, A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) recounts a dark corporate fairy tale about the production of mechanical androids (mecha) that persists despite the climate crisis.
